SOUTH KOREA
The book: Jo Kyung Ran’s “Looking for the Elephant” (part of a short-story collection).
Why we should be able to read it: “I was reminded of Haruki Murakami’s best work by the way she examines painful situations profoundly with a refreshing absence of bathos.” —Samantha Schnee, editor, Words Without Borders

Karl Pohrt, who’s run the Shaman Drum bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for nearly 30 years, suggested a similarly proactive approach: “In the bookselling community, we feel there’s a cultural or moral or political obligation to put these books in front of the American reader.” He argued that translation was not only a literary but a geopolitical imperative. Knowledge of foreign cultures, and the sense that non-Americans have “inner lives,” may discourage further military adventures abroad.